It’s hot here in Missouri. High temperatures are in the upper nineties and the forecast calls for more of the same for the rest of the week. Fortunately from the perspective of comfort, but unfortunately for the crops, the humidity has been relatively low. The days start out moist, with relative humidity at about 85%, but as the temperature goes up, the humidity falls to somewhere in the thirties by the end of the day.

Folks around here can’t remember a time when the weather was like this. That seems to be true in many places. The weather seems to be setting new records of extremes in many places in the past few years. It is hard to remember that just a year ago the entire Missouri River Basin was facing record high water and flooding. Right now a little more water would be nice, but this year’s extremes are different from those of a year ago.

Hot and dry means fires across the west. New Mexico and Colorado are setting records for the worst fire year ever. Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming also have seen more fires than typical. And after the fires come other problems. Even with the millions of dollars that are being spent on fire restoration, there can be big problems following the fires. If the weather does another swing to extremes and there is much moisture, there will be mudslides accompanying the flooding next spring. That is what is happening near Los Alamos, where the Las Conchas Fire burned last year. This year flooding in the burn scar is a big concern. On Wednesday night a wall of water rushed down Santa Clara Canyon, washing away months of restoration work done by government contractors.

We seem to be living in a time of extremes.

2012 may turn out to be one of the worst years on record for fatalities in mountain climbing accidents. Two people were killed by a freak storm-driven flood in the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee this month. Four died in an avalanche on Mt. McKinley in Alaska in June. Since November, 34 people have been killed by avalanches in the United States. Three of the four worst years for avalanche deaths have occurred since 2007. Tucker Chenoweth, a mountaineering ranger at Denali National Park and Preserve said, “The extremes are becoming more extreme.” The Denali search and rescue teams have been called upon more often this year, sometimes having to mount efforts 60 or more miles from their base camp. The mountain experts say that wild places like Mt. McKinley are getting wilder – or at least harder to predict.

We seem to be living in a time of extremes.

And the extremes are not limited to natural phenomena. Some of the extremes are of human origin.

The 112th Congress, currently in session seems to be setting record after record for inefficiency, lack of work, polarization and division. The vote, earlier this week, by the House of Representatives to repeal the Affordable Care Act set some kind of record. It doesn’t come as a surprise that the Republican-controlled House would oppose a health reform law and vote to get rid of it. But this week’s vote was the 33rd time they voted to repeal the act. If doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result makes you insane, what does doing the same thing 33 times and expecting a different result make you? I guess it makes you the 112th Congress. Ezra Klein, of the Washington Post blogged fourteen reasons why the current congress will go down as the worst in history.

We seem to be living in a time of extremes and some of those extremes are human behavior.

I could go on and on. The amount of money being spent on the current presidential election is extreme. The amount of time of time Representatives and Senators spend raising money is extreme. The vitriol spewed by hate radio is extreme. The lack of objectivity in news reporting is extreme.

The extremes in weather seem mild by comparison with the extremes that are created by human decisions and actions.

Actually the extremes of weather may also be the result of our decisions – at least some of the effects of them are. The high loss of homes in the wildfires this year is the direct result of too many of us wanting to have our homes tucked into the woods instead of gathered together in safer locations. It seems that everyone who can afford it is wanting their own piece of the forest to build a home. I can’t criticize others. We love living on the edge of the forest in the hills. We love the trees in our own yard. Although we’ve worked to maintain green space and don’t have trees too close to the house, my own behavior hasn’t been all that much different from those who lost their homes to the recent fires. It could happen to us and we know it. Decisions about where to build a house can have dramatic consequences.

The same is true of the many deaths to avalanches. It is partly due to the fact that there have been a lot of avalanches in the mountains this year. It is partly due to the fact that there are more people attempting extreme mountain climbs. Mountain experts are reporting that more and more people are heading into the mountains with less equipment and less preparation than was the case a decade ago. Dangerous environments are not kind to those who are not well-prepared.

So it seems to me to be reasonable to be taking a vacation in an unremarkable place this year. We are enjoying exploring a bit of central Missouri. We are enjoying working on our daughter and son-in-law’s home. We are enjoying spending time with family. We enjoy the cool of the morning and endure the heat of midday. We work when we can and take a break when we are too hot. There is nothing extreme or remarkable about our week.

We have no need of extremes. There are plenty of others who are going to extremes. We seem to live in a world of extremes.

Copyright © 2012 by Ted Huffman. I wrote this. If you want to copy it, please ask for permission. There is a contact me button at the bottom of this page. If you want to share my blog a friend, please direct your friend to my web site.